Podcast Introduction

Today is Monday, so we will read from one of the books of the Law. We’ll read Numbers  29-32. I’m calling today’s episode  “Balaam Gets His Due.“

Design: Steve Webb | Photo: Mark Kuiper on Unsplash

Comments on Numbers 29 and 31

Thoughts on Numbers 29

Chapters 28 and 29 tell us about the offerings that the Lord told Moses the children of Israel were to make during the year. 

There were:

1) Daily offerings (Numbers 28)

2) Sabbath offerings (Numbers 28)

3) Monthly offerings (Numbers 28)

4) Passover offerings (Numbers 28)

5) Feast of Weeks offerings (Numbers 28)

6) Feast of Trumpets offerings (Numbers 29)

7) Day of Atonement offerings  (Numbers 29)

8) Feast of Tabernacles offerings (Numbers 29)

In order for Israel to fulfill these offerings each year, the priests sacrificed 113 bulls, 32 rams, over 2,000 pounds of flour, about 1,000 bottles of oil and wine, and 1,086 lambs without blemish. These totals do not include sacrifices made by individuals or families. 

Since these sacrifices were to be made every year, we know that they were inadequate to forgive sin. This was a perpetual demonstration of the need for the One who would bring forgiveness.

Notice the number of lambs without blemish. These pointed to the coming Messiah. In John 1:29 He is called "the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world." Only Jesus could accomplish this. His one sacrifice was sufficient to bring forgiveness to anyone who put their faith in Him. Jesus said, "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved." John 3:16-17 NKJV

Thoughts on Numbers 31

In Numbers 22 Balak, the king of Moab, sent a contingent made up of elders Moab and the elders of Midian  to Balaam to bring him to meet with Balak so that he could ask Balaam to put a curse on the children of Israel so that he could defeat them. Balak offered Balaam a large reward if he would curse them. Of course, God would not allow it. So Balak told Balaam that he would not get the reward. 

But what God would not allow the Moabites and Midianites to do to the children of Israel, they did to themselves.   

In Numbers 25 we read the Israelite people were seduced into sexual sin with the women of Moab, and they worshipped false gods with them. And God became angry with the people of Israel and brought judgement against them in the form of a plague. It was only when Phinehas, out of righteous anger killed one of the Israelite men and the Midianite woman he was with that God stopped the plague. 

Here in chapter 31, verse 1 the Lord spoke to Moses and said, “Pay back the Midianites for what they did to the Israelites..."

So God first brought judgement on Israel for their guilt, but after that He brought judgement on the Midianites for their guilt. 

Remember Balaam? In Revelation 2:14 Jesus said to the church in Pergamum, "“There are some among you who hold to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to entice the Israelites to sin so that they ate food sacrificed to idols and committed sexual immorality.” So it was Balaam who was responsible for the idea that nearly brought ruin to Israel. Balaam presumably finally did get his reward from Balak, but here in chapter 31, verse 8 we read that he was killed along with every Midianite man.

Moses became angry after the battle because they brought back the women and children with the other spoils of war. Why? What harm could come from women and children? Some of these women were part of the immorality that the Israelites became involved in. Allowing these women to live among them was to invite further disaster. So Moses said that all the women who had been with a man must be killed, but those who had not been with a man (and thus who did not participate in immorality w...